Fennel (galbanum)
Plants and Trees in the Bible
The fennel plant can grow to 1.5 meters (5 feet) in height. It has fine, shiny leaflets, a thick smooth stem, and a flower head like an umbrella. The seeds are shiny and very small. The plant has a milky juice that comes out by itself from the joints or oozes out from the stem when it is cut. It forms aromatic greenish or yellowish beads when it dries. The taste is bitter and the smell is strong. A kind of fennel grows in Galilee (Ferula communis), but it does not yield the galbanum resin. Another kind, known from Roman coins from Carthage, grew in North Africa under the name silphion (probably Ferula tingitana).
Pictures
In the Bible
The Hebrew and Greek words for it, and every verse where each is used
חֶלְבְּנָה chelbenah · 1 verse
χαλβάνη chalbanē · 1 verse
What it stands for
According to , galbanum resin was part of the incense prescribed by Moses for burning in the Tablernacle. In Assyria it was used as a fumigant. It could have been the “gum” mentioned in . The Roman writer Pliny considered it a powerful remedy.
More about it
Although its identity in the Bible is uncertain, galbanum is probably a gum resin from a plant called Fennel Ferula galbaniflua, which grows in India, Iran and Afghanistan, and especially in the high mountains of Iran. The fennel is related to the parsley family. Today most commercial galbanum comes from Lebanon and Iran.
Also in Trees and plants yielding incense and perfume
Sources
Plants and Trees in the Bible, Animals in the Bible and Human-made Things in the Bible © United Bible Societies, 2025 (adapted from Each According to its Kind: Plants and Trees in the Bible by Robert Koops, All Creatures Great and Small: Living Things in the Bible by Edward R. Hope, and The Works of Their Hands: Man-made Things in the Bible by Ray Pritz), CC BY-SA 4.0; adapted for eRhema